


movement (forward, not back)

by signifying_nothing



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: M/M, Recovery Story, mentions of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7199045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>yoongi has a breakdown their senior year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	movement (forward, not back)

**Author's Note:**

> you know. just once i'd like to write something that isn't... well. whatever. i have about 9000 WIPs and this stupid thing kept me up all night. enjoy.  
> heavily inspired by these [two](https://67.media.tumblr.com/7c776a7df41250e3efcef791aef811b6/tumblr_o58udj5tDa1v2v6pmo2_r1_400.gif) [gifs.](https://66.media.tumblr.com/657d65f2fdd03d6c6ba9cd0b5a7f0914/tumblr_o30td2EhJt1rsurlso1_r1_400.gif)

“Hoseok—”

“Don't.”

Hoseok can't remember the last time he was this pissed off. He literally can't recall a time when he'd been angrier than he was right then—with Yoongi shrinking away from where his forehead had been resting against the back of Hoseok's shoulder, with his body heat moving away but Hoseok is still burning with rage. He's not even sure of why he's surprised. Yoongi's bad attitude is nothing new; his inability to _shut the fuck up_ when he's gone too far is not a revelation. Hoseok knows what Yoongi is capable of, when that knife comes out of his mouth dripping in acid, masquerading as his tongue. Hoseok knows how cruel Yoongi can be.

That doesn't mean he wants to witness it. Doesn't mean he wants to hear about it. Hoseok has lived in a bubble about his best friend for a long time: everyone else basically hates him, and for a damned good reason. He's an asshole. Hoseok knows he is. But enough is enough. It's enough. Yoongi's iron walls have grown too high to scale.

“It's enough,” he says, and he hears Yoongi's shoulders and wrists pop, probably with how tightly he's holding himself. Hoseok knows what Yoongi does when it hurts. He knows the snapping of his joints, the sound of his heaving, the smell of his blood, but Hoseok—

Hoseok is _tired._ Hoseok is tired, and Yoongi... Yoongi will never stop running, stop burning, stop bleeding. Yoongi is a monster and Hoseok is tired of trying to tame him.

“Just go, would you. Just. Take your shit and leave.” He listens to Yoongi shuffle back. Listens to him pick up his bag. Whatever equipment he'd brought with him rattles around in it; paint bottles, brushes, his laptop and tablet. Yoongi had said he had something to show him, a new program for digital painting, something he thought Hoseok would like, but Hoseok doesn't care.

The door opens, and Yoongi has one foot on the tile when Hoseok says it, and then pretends he can't hear the sound of Yoongi's heart breaking.

“Don't come back.”

~

It takes all of three hours for Hoseok to regret what he said. _Don't come back,_ he'd whispered, and he presses his hands to his eyes and looks around the studio. It was wrong of him to do that, and he knows it. They're seniors, they share this studio space at the will of the school, but he doesn't want to call him to apologize yet. Doesn't want to hear his voice, thick and brusque with denial and cool self-displacement. Yoongi has always been very good at pretending he doesn't feel anything. Hoseok knows better.

Yoongi's last piece is still on the easel, half-sketched, half-painted. The picture of Taehyung, leaping through the air dressed as Peter Pan, sits pinned to the top corner. Yoongi's choice of color has pulled the life out of the black and white photo and spread it onto the canvas in gold, green and orange. The painting, not even half-finished, breathes. It moves, just as the photograph does.

The entire series is called _movement._ Hoseok has read Yoongi's defense of his work, has proofread his artist statement and checked to make sure he sounded coherent, just as Yoongi did for him. He's watched Yoongi take photographs and pour over them, up to his elbows in developer, squinting at the negatives, at the finished products. The transition from black and white to color, the movement of paint against the stillness of photo paper. _movement,_ the series is called, and there are photographs of their friends—Hoseoks friends. Pinned up on the piece of string hanging across the wall, Hoseok included. Jeongguk in the middle of throwing a discus, his brow furrowed with concentration; Jimin on his skates, coming out of a double... Something or other, with arm and leg outstretched for balance, a happy grin on his face. Seokjin, turning around and smiling from his kitchen counter. Namjoon looking up from where he swings his legs over the back of his car, gaze distant.

Hoseok, stretching his arms up over his head, laughing at something Yoongi said, his tablet pen still in his hand.

~

It's Hongbin who comes to collect Yoongi's things. The photography major stands in the door and says nothing until Hoseok lets him in. His friend Wonsik attempts small talk with Hoseok while Hongbin puts all of Yoongi's things into the cardboard box and the art sling he'd brought with him. Wonsik is uncomfortable and Hoseok is uncomfortable but Hongbin moves like clockwork and takes away any sign Yoongi ever worked in the small studio space.

“Where's he gonna work now,” Hoseok asks, as Hongbin shoulders the bag and tucks the box under his arm. Wonsik holds the door and Hongbin turns to face Hoseok, his eyes hard as flint. It takes everything Hoseok has not to flinch.

“What's it matter to you?” he asks, and while Hoseok is stunned he leaves. Wonsik stammers out an apology and follows after Hongbin and Hoseok... Hoseok stands in the half-empty studio and falls into the white half of the room, the space that should have been filled with _movement_ and Yoongi's stupid, gummy smile: the one he hasn't seen in who knows how long.

~

The thing about an arts school in a small town is that word gets around fast. Word gets around fast and Hoseok finds himself surrounded by his friends. They fill up the white half of the studio with color and laughter.

“He was an asshole anyway,” Jimin mutters, crossing his arms. Hoseok knows Jimin doesn't like Yoongi, because Yoongi doesn't know how to be friendly to people like Jimin. Yoongi spent his entire young adulthood on the defense, so when someone with no ulterior motive appears, of course he's suspicious. Hoseok has _explained_ this, and still Jimin doesn't like him. “So whatever. Besides, now you have the workspace to yourself, right? That's gotta be nice.”

Yeah... Nice. Alone at three am, the lack of clove smoke or the smell of gin and tonic. The absence of Yoongi's rasping voice, singing under his breath. No more Yoongi asleep on the studio floor, with his backpack as a pillow and paint smeared on his cheek.

“He wasn't an asshole,” Seokjin says, diplomatic as always as he crosses his arms. “He was very clearly struggling with some stuff. Maybe it all just came to a head? I'm sure he'll be fine, if you let him cool down for a while.”

“Who cares about whether or not he's fine?” Jimin says, and Seokjin smacks his arm.

“Don't be _mean,_ Park Jimin.”

“I'll be mean if I want to. He did, in fact, call me a faggot in front of everyone I work with.”

Hoseok hasn't told them that he was the one to tell Yoongi to get out. He'd let them draw their own conclusions and maybe that was a mistake, because it painted Yoongi as the bad guy and let Hoseok off the hook for being so...

“Well, I hope he's okay,” Taehyung says, and Jeongguk nods. “I mean he was... Like, I mean I guess he was mean, but I never thought he was being mean _to_ me. Just... _At_ me, you know? Like he was just mad and there was nowhere else for it to go.”

Taehyung has no idea just how right he is. Hoseok feels his heart sinking in his chest.

~

Hongbin won't tell him anything. Any attempt to speak to him ends with Hongbin looking down his nose, imperious, and cocking his eyebrow before leaving. Searching for Yoongi on campus gives him nothing. Hoseok knows he lives off campus, but he doesn't want to go chasing him down. Yoongi treasures his privacy like nothing else, but it's impossible that he hasn't seen him at school in almost three weeks.

So he goes to the head of the Fine Arts department, and is surprised when she ushers him inside and closes the door. “Hoseok,” she says, motioning for him to sit down. “Do you know what's going on with Yoongi?”

“...No,” Hoseok admits, flushed with shame as his program director bites into her lip and pushes away from her desk to pull a sketchpad off of the windowsill. “What's that?”

“He left this in class a few days ago,” she says. “He hasn't been back to get it.”

So unlike Yoongi, to leave his possessions anywhere. So unlike him to let his sketchpad out of his sight but there it is, it's black cover matte with bright silver lettering, _PATI,_ the lines painstakingly neat and sharp.

 _It's Latin,_ Yoongi had explained. _It's the Latin root for patience, and passion. Do you know what it means?_

_No, what?_

_To suffer._

Hoseok reaches out and takes the sketchpad. Flips it open. The first few sketches, he's seen before. Polaroids pinned in the corners, of Hoseok's friends and places they liked to go, places they'd begrudgingly allowed Yoongi to tag along to because Hoseok insisted. The next pages, sketches for his senior project, and after that, polaroids of Hongbin: laughing, holding up a negative, kissing Wonsik. Then just polaroids taped to pages: images of broken bones, bruises, blood, taken from textbooks or computer screens, though a few of them look too real for Hoseok's sensitive stomach. Hoseok swallows and flips up one of the pictures, sees a date and a thumbnail of the image.

He flips it back down and stares hard. It's not difficult to imagine that what he's looking at is the back of Yoongi's skinny leg, blood running out from beneath his shorts down the back of his calf, down into his socks, staining them.

“Do you know what this is about, Hoseok?” she asks, and Hoseok shakes his head, turns the page to find a crumpled, folded piece of paper tucked into the sketchpad. Something on official letterhead, Something that has been ripped into pieces and clumsily taped back together. Hoseok unfolds it and can barely read the warped lettering, swallows down the urge to be sick when he reads, _and we must regretfully recommend immediate placement in the New Haven Mental Health Facilities, for your own personal safety and the safety of others._

 _FUCK YOU,_ Yoongi has scrawled across the paper. There are drips of what can only be blood, smeared across the margins. The paper is dated nearly four weeks ago.

~

Hoseok finds Hongbin in the darkroom. He drags him from the counter, slams him into the wall. In the low red light, Hongbin looks surprised and Hoseok finds some kind of gratification in that. “Where is he,” Hoseok snarls, and Hongbin's eyes get hard. “ _Where is he._ ”

“What the _fuck_ does it matter to you?!” Hongbin shoves Hoseok and his back hits the wash, spilling water all over the floor, knocking tools into the chemical pans. Everything smells like vinegar and vanilla, it smells like Yoongi's clothes. “You're the one who told him to fucking leave! You're the one who told him not to come back, so what the fuck does it matter to you if he doesn't?!”

Hoseok falls silent. Everything smells like Yoongi's clothes, his hair. Yoongi is an asshole but sometimes he's so small and so scared. Sometimes Hoseok found himself with an armful of older friend with no words to explain and he'd never asked for one, for an explanation. Not for Yoongi's gruff silences, not for his mean comments, not for... Not for anything. So of course he doesn't get one now.

“He needed you,” Hongbin says, and he sounds so tired. “He _needed you._ You don't get to fucking chase after him now. Not after that.”

 _Hoseok,_ Yoongi had said. _I... I need to talk to you._

_About what?_

_About—_

_About what you said to Taehyung? About what you said to Jimin? Jesus fucking Christ, Yoongi, what the fuck is your problem?_ Hoseok's hands shoved Yoongi back into the wall. A frame hit the ground, glass shattered, and Yoongi flinched down like he was expecting Hoseok to... To hit him. Hoseok had wanted to hit him. _Do you really have a fucking issue with gay people? What the fuck kind of shit is that?_

_That's not what I mea— Hoseok no, let me explain—_

_No? What did you fucking mean then, huh? I know you don't fucking like them, but Jesus fuck if I'd known you were such a fucking dick I'd never have let you meet them in the first place._ Hoseok pointed to the picture hanging on the string, of Jimin and Taehyung laughing, falling into one another. Yoongi followed the line of his arm and his bottom lip shook before he bit into it. Hoseok wanted to hit him. _They fucking trusted you!_

_Hoseok, that's not what I meant, it's not about that, please—_

_No. I don't want to fucking hear it. I don't want to hear your fucking voice. Just shut the fuck up._

And Yoongi had silenced himself, rested his head on Hoseok's shoulder and Hoseok had pretended not to hear the way his breath quivered in and out of his lungs and he'd told him to get out, and not to come back. _That's not what I meant,_ Yoongi had said, or tried to. Hoseok had been so angry he hadn't bothered to listen to anything Yoongi had to say: he'd just been so tired. So tired of Yoongi saying mean things, being a bad person, being a bad _friend._

But maybe Hoseok had been a bad friend, too.

“Where is he, Hongbin.” Hoseok is so tired. Hongbin is tired, and the photo in his hand is Yoongi, crouching against brick, one hand fisted up in his hair. It's black in the picture. “Where is he. Please.”

“Fuck you,” Hongbin whispers, and Hoseok snatches the photograph out of Hongbin's hand. Hongbin doesn't try to take it back: Hoseok stalks out into the hallway and back to his studio before he looks again at the quickly drying paper.

Yoongi looks like he's wearing ill-fitted pajamas. His hair is black, and his feet are bare, and Hoseok can see the scars, thick lines across the top of his feet and around his ankles, like jewelry. Hoseok wonders if he'd see matching bracelets on his wrists.

~

Hoseok isn't on the approved visitor list.

“I'm sorry,” the receptionist says for about the ninth time, while Hoseok all but tears his own hair out. “I can't let you into the facility without a permission form, and only Mister Min can fill those out. I can certainly let his nurse know you stopped by—”

“Can I talk to his nurse? I don't—I just need to know if he's _okay._ He's my _friend._ ” The receptionist takes pity on him, and Hoseok finds himself in a small conference room, his leg bouncing anxiously as he stares out over the white table to the white walls. It reminds him of Yoongi's skin in Hongbin's photograph. Almost translucent. Moon-white.

“Jung Hoseok?”

“Yes,” he stands, heart pounding, and stares at the nurse. A woman, perhaps in her forties. She is tall and regal and Hoseok shrinks down into his chair when she turns her eyes on him.

“I was told you wanted to speak to me.”

“Is Yoongi okay?” Hoseok asks, and her eyes are impassive. “Please, I just—I know he doesn't want to see me, that's, that's fine, I just, I wanted to give him this,” he offers out Yoongi's sketchpad. “I just wanted to know if, if he...” he trails off, and swallows. Wills himself not to cry because that is _pathetic_ and he has no right to. “If he's getting the help he needs.”

She breathes in slowly. Hoseok feels all of his legendary confidence bleeding out through his fingertips. “His recovery process is difficult,” she says. “He has a long way to go.”

“Will he be okay,” Hoseok asks.

“That's up to him,” she replies.

~

 _Borderline Personality Disorder,_ is what they call it. Features of it. Combined with _Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder._ Yoongi still doesn't want to see him, but Hoseok visits his nurse once every week or so, desperate to understand the monster that swallowed his best friend and spat him back out again as a different person. It's funny, how he hadn't really thought about it until Yoongi's behavior became too aggressive to ignore; he'd always been such a bright kid, so happy and friendly, even though he was painfully shy.

Something happened to Yoongi in middle school. His nurse listens as Hoseok talks about how Yoongi stopped wanting to go outside and play; how he'd found it preferable to lose hours in coloring books or reading, a pattern that continued through high school and into college. Hoseok had never thought to question it; Yoongi was his best friend. Yoongi was his best friend and he just liked being inside more than being outside. He liked drawing more than playing tag, and that was fine. He liked to stay at Hoseok's house, and if he was still there and it had gotten dark, he stayed over. They slept in the same bed, always with a light on. Yoongi could never sleep in the dark.

Yoongi's nurse takes notes when Hoseok talks. She says what he's telling her will help her help Yoongi, who struggles through therapy and recovery, who relapses into lashing out and screaming, who hits his head against the wall when he feels helpless and cornered. She says it's a day to day process; sometimes he's better, and other times, he's worse.

Hoseok remembers watching Yoongi sit in their freshman dorm room, knees to his chest and knocking his head back against the painted cinderblock in rhythm.

He leaves coloring books. The adult ones, with meticulous designs, alongside a box of Yoongi's favorite markers. He leaves tubes of watercolor paint and a new pad and a few brushes. He feels helpless.

He wonders how helpless Yoongi felt that day in the studio, when Hoseok lost his temper and both of them lost a friend.

~

Hoseok breaks down after graduation. He walked alone, received his diploma. He's cleaning out the studio when he finds it: a polaroid of the two of them with their arms around one another, lost under his desk who knew when. Yoongi's arm was outstretched to hold the camera, Hoseok's fingers up in a V beside his eye. It's from last year, when the two of them went to Busan over winter break.

 _my best friend,_ Yoongi's handwriting is messy across the bottom of the picture, and Hoseok is standing in the studio, with Namjoon and Seokjin coming inside, when he starts crying and can't seem to stop. He misses his best friend. He misses him so much. And Hoseok isn't sure how long he's been missing him, because it seems like a lot longer than the three months he's been in the mental health facility (He can't call it an insane asylum. And the one time Taehyung had jokingly called it a _nuthouse,_ Hoseok had nearly decked him.)

“Oh, oh Hoseok,” Seokjin's voice is soothing, but Hoseok wants his mom. He wants his mom, he wants his bedroom back in Townsend, he wants his little mushroom nightlight and his star-speckled sheets that matched his star-speckled ceiling. He wants his best friend.

He feels stupid, but he can't seem to stop crying. He's holding onto that picture like a lifeline, because for the longest time, he couldn't remember what Yoongi's smile looked like but there it is, immortalized, a little slice of hope.

Hoseok hopes.

~

Hoseok is at his moms house, when he gets the letter. He's been working at the grocery store in town while attempting to find full-time work, and he gets a letter with his name on it, sent from the _New Haven Mental Health Facility,_ care of _Patient Min Yoongi._

He rips it from his mother's hands before she can read it and throws himself up the stairs. Holds it in his hands and watches the paper shake before coming back to himself enough to rip it open, reverent of Yoongi's handwriting on the front, careful of the papers in the envelope. The first is a form for visitation permission. Hoseok nearly starts crying.

When he reads the short letter, he does cry. But it's a good cry. The happy kind.

_dear hoseok._

_i'm sorry. i know i messed up. i know i messed up, and i'm sorry i haven't sent this to you yet. i guess i'm just not... i wasn't ready. amelia says you've been talking to her every week. i'm not really surprised, i mean. she asked me to talk about you a lot._

_anyway. this is a permission slip. it just says you can visit. but hopefully i'll be out in a month or so. amelia says my medication is helping, even if i can't really tell. once it all regulates out, i'll be free to go. kind of sucks that i have to wait till next year to graduate, but i guess if i'd taken care of myself sooner, this wouldn't have happened, right? you'd be amazed what therapy does for your art. i think everyone should try it at least once. and thanks for the coloring books and paints, by the way._

_i'll talk to you later, hoseok. i hope you're okay. i should have written sooner. hongbin said you've been really worried (he calls me, sometimes. he's not allowed to visit either. he “enables me” or something.)_

_i'll see you soon, right?_

_always your friend,_

_(even though i suck)_

_min yoongi._

~

The first thing Hoseok notices is that Yoongi has black hair. It's long, hanging in his eyes, covering his eyebrows. The second thing he notices is that Yoongi's cheeks have filled out. Where once his cheekbones could have cut glass, now... They're soft. Yoongi is soft. Yoongi is soft and Hoseok is soft with him, sitting across from him in the meeting room where they're allowed to be alone to talk. The coffee table has a small platter of crackers on it, and two cans of sprite. Hoseok's voice is low and gentle, and Yoongi...

Yoongi doesn't say much at all. He watches Hoseok get comfortable, babbling about this and that, nothing important, and he watches until Hoseok feels himself getting nervous.

“What,” he asks, and Yoongi smiles. He smiles that gummy, happy smile from where he's perched in an armchair not six feet away, and laughs.

“I just missed listening to you talk,” he says. His voice is suspiciously thick and Hoseok feels his heart stop, and suddenly he's crying because shit, he's missed Yoongi too. He's missed Yoongi too and he tells him so, reaching out his arms like he did so often as a child when one or both of them were crying. Yoongi climbs onto the couch and half into Hoseok's lap and Hoseok grips him so tight he's afraid he might break his ribs; he just doesn't want to let go. He'd been so afraid. So fucking afraid for his older friend, whose demons had turned him into a monster and trapped him here, who was trying so hard to get help and what the fuck had Hoseok done to even attempt understanding what was happening?

“I'm sorry,” Yoongi gasps for air, and Hoseok knows he's probably going to get in trouble for this, Amelia or someone is going to come in here and get mad, but he cups Yoongi's little face in his hands and kisses his lips, chaste and dry. He feels like it's been building in his blood for years, like it's supposed to happen. The nervous clench of his stomach loosens and Yoongi's fingers fist in his t-shirt. His face pinches and Hoseok wonders what made Yoongi hate himself so much when he presses his face to Hoseok's shoulder and relaxes under the warmth of his arms.

“Forgiven,” Hoseok promises, pressing another dry kiss to Yoongi's cheek, under his eye, over his eyebrow, on the side of his nose. “All forgiven.”

Yoongi hugs Hoseok around the neck and shoulders. They curl around one another like snakes and say nothing until a doctor comes in to separate them.

Hoseok thinks about Yoongi cradled into the curve of his chest for a very long time.

~

“Is he okay?” Taehyung asks when Hoseok comes back from his visit, looking ethereal in harem pants and a tunic shirt and a fitted vest. He looks like he walked out of a storybook and Hoseok pauses for a moment.

“Stay right there,” he says, and Taehyung watches him rummage for the polaroid camera, turning it on, holding it up to his eye. “Don't look at me, like. Look over there or something.” Pause. “Don't just turn your head, dummy, like—look like you would if Jimin was coming in or something.”

Taehyung can't help but smile, the expression cracking open to bleed sunlight on his face and Hoseok snaps the picture, pulls it from the camera, and sets it down.

“What's it for?” he asks, motioning for Hoseok to come and sit down.

“Just... Trying to get Yoongi some new inspiration.”

“Is he okay?”

“...I think he's gonna be.”

It takes longer to convince Jimin, who is still smarting over Yoongi being a huge asshole to him. At him. Luckily, Taehyung has no problem shamelessly wearing down his boyfriend's defenses. “Hey, do you remember being stuck in the closet, Park Jimin? You weren't any peach yourself, I'll have you know. You yelled at me _all the time._ ”

“I never yelled at you in front of anyone,” Jimin sulks, tying on his skates anyway. He has a competition at the end of the week and he's wearing his outfit, the material of his skin-colored body suit stretched tight beneath his vest and short pants. He's doing a routine to a song from _Aladdin,_ and Hoseok snaps an entire roll of film, thanks him profusely.

“Whatever,” Jimin says, crossing his arms over his chest and almost pouting, though the expression is maybe just a little worried. “He needs to get out so he can apologize to me properly.”

Hoseok isn't a great photographer, so he thinks maybe the shots of his friends are mostly unusable, but Yoongi loves them, anyway, He picks through them, pulls out the ones he wants to draw from, and shifts to rest his head on Hoseok's chest. Hoseok knows he's grateful, can feel it in the squeeze of his hand.

“I'll get started as soon as you leave,” Yoongi promises, and Hoseok nods.

“I'm gonna go home soon.”

“I know.”

“...You'll still visit me, right?”

Hoseok fights the urge to laugh, because he knows Yoongi's anxiety isn't funny. Instead, he offers his hand and kisses the backs of Yoongi's skinny fingers when he takes it. “I will.”

~

They never do get around to talking about what caused Yoongi to snap, that second semester of their senior year. Yoongi can't bring it up and Hoseok won't force him to, though he _does_ insist on driving him to therapy every week. He waits in the lobby, catching up on reading he meant to do while Yoongi is in with the psychologist Amelia recommended. He can't help but notice that the woman specializes in abuse and trauma recovery. Everything Hoseok has read about Yoongi's disorder implies a lot of things he isn't comfortable thinking about. Things that remind him of what he'd considered quirky little habits in childhood that now have a much darker connotation. Yoongi's fear of the dark. His hatred for male figures of authority. His fear of punishment, and being alone. Open doors.

It's Hongbin who tells him about the exact moment it happened: they were in the photography labs, and one of the teaching assistants had draped his big arm over Yoongi's narrow shoulders in the dark and whispered in his ear. Hongbin had told him to fuck off, but the damage was done: Yoongi rattled his way through the rest of lab, all of his bones shaking, and he'd managed to gasp out that he needed Hoseok before he all but ran to the studio they shared.

The two of them share a significant look over the coffees they're drinking as Wonsik and Yoongi come back over, trays of sandwiches in their hands. Wonsik squints from one of them to the other, but Yoongi just slides into the booth next to Hoseok and stays close to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, like he's afraid to be separated from him. Hoseok reaches down and holds his hand.

Yoongi has apologized to Jimin and Taehyung approximately a hundred million times. Taehyung can't care less; he accepted the apology the first time, offering his hands for Yoongi to hold in strangely intimate contact. Jimin was harder to convince, but even he had to give in, even if he was only sick of Yoongi shying away from him when they were all together, acting like a kicked puppy at his own graduation party.

“You're pathetic,” he'd complained. “If I was _still_ _mad_ I wouldn't _be here,_ Min Yoongi. I'm not mad!” Then he'd shoved Yoongi's present into his hands, crossed his own arms. “Besides,” he'd muttered. “I think you've beat yourself up enough for one lifetime, yeah? I don't want to add to that.”

After that, the two of them had gone to talk alone, and Hoseok sometimes thinks that Jimin knows more about the situation than he does, but that's okay. It's important that Yoongi have friends he can talk to, because of course he's not going to want to share everything with everyone. He seems content to share most of himself with Hoseok.

They share a two bedroom apartment in Townsend, now. Hoseok works in a design firm and Yoongi has a photography business, with painting commissions on the side. They both have their own space to work in, but the couch in the living room unfolds into a bed and more often than not that's where the two of them sleep.

Yoongi sleeps in just his t-shirt and briefs. Hoseok lounges in his ridiculous _weed pants_ (Keep One Rolled, they read) and holds Yoongi's hand while he dozes on Saturday mornings when they have nothing to do, nowhere to be. He snaps polaroids of Yoongi's sleepy face, the pale curve of his striped belly and thighs, the war paint permanently raked into his skin as a reminder of the battles he's fought through.

“They're beautiful,” he whispers into Yoongi's hair, when his fingers trace down the scarring and Yoongi flinches, or looks away. “Look what you've survived, babe. You made it.”

“I love you,” Yoongi breathes, and Hoseok swallows the words like a meal that will keep him full for the rest of his life. He cradles Yoongi's nude body to his body and in the sunlight through the venetian blinds they bleed into one another. “I love you, Hoseok.”

He's finally stopped apologizing every time he says it. Hoseok's arms bracket his head, Yoongi's hands brace on his biceps and he laughs when Hoseok gives a great sniff, because hearing him say it still gives Hoseok goosebumps. _I love you._ He'd had no idea how long he'd been waiting for that until Yoongi said it the first time, looking up from his canvas with a stunned look on his face, paintbrush dangling from his fingers.

_I love you, Hoseok._

_What?_

_I love you._

_movement_ hangs in the living room. Across the southern wall, always lit up by the sun, are the images of their friends and in the middle, in the middle is the painting of the two of them: holding one another's hands and running, laughing, leading one another out of the dark.

 


End file.
